For years now, programmers constructing the utopian machine known as artificial intelligence have been programming their code, checking their hardware, developing all this technology for a chance to past the Turing Test. If these machines can pass a five minute conversation with 30% of its observers thinking it is human, then by the Turing Test, this machine is deemed “intelligent”. Myriad amounts of pattern matching algorithms and notes on human linguistics have been programmed into these machines, trying to imitate the design of human speech.
But what if a machine was able to pass the Turing Test? No, better yet, what if a machine was able to completely dominate the test. If it fooled 100% of those interacting with it, it must be intelligent. Right? Well, let’s look at the test itself. All these computers have to do is carry on a 5 minute conversation. Now, I know that doing this convincingly is a daunting task, but the way that these computers structure their conversation is the important part.
There is no learning from the machine. This learning, at least in my opinion, is what makes us as humans intelligent. All of this pattern matching is predetermined code programmed by not a machine, but a human. Granted, conversation is a task that requires an incomprehensible amount of this pattern matching, but it is still pattern matching none the less. Even Cleverbot, which is supposed to “learn” by the responses generated by its users, simply inserts these responses into an impressible, but still static algorithm.
No, the day that artificial intelligence, at least to me, will be truly realized is not when machines can simply carry on a conversation. What is language but a series of patterns anyway? Intelligence is defined by learning, and we as people understand concepts, ideas, creeds, beliefs, and the world around us through this. A machine, one it can do this, may be intelligent, but until that day, it is still just a machine.
I agree with your post about how the Turing Tests definition of an artificial intelligence and what would actually be an artificial intelligence is completely different. In a way its kind of like saying if you can build a model rocket then you are a rocket scientist. In reality all you have done is followed a set of instructions to build something that someone else went through the engineering process to create.
ReplyDeleteWhile beating the Turing Test will be a large accomplishment for any computer it will not mean its any more "intelligent" but most likely that it's just put together better.